The mythological tales that we have been glancing at deal with the folk who are fabled as having first colonised Erin; they treat of peoples, races, dynasties, the struggle between good and evil principles. The whole of their creations are thrown back, even by the Irish annalists themselves, into the dim cloud-land of an unplumbed past, ages before the dawn of the first Olympiad, or the birth of the wolf-suckled twins who founded Rome. There is over it all a shadowy sense of vagueness, vastness, uncertainty.

The Heroic Cycle, on the other hand, deals with the history of the Milesians themselves, the present Irish race, within a well-defined space of time, upon their own ground, and though it does not exactly fall within the historical period, yet it does not come so far short of it that it can be with any certainty rejected as pure work of imagination or poetic fiction. It is certainly the finest of the three greater saga-cycles, and the epics that belong to it are sharply drawn, numerous, clear cut, and ancient, and for the first time we seem, at least, to find ourselves upon historical ground, although a good deal of this seeming may turn out to be illusory. Yet the figures of Cuchulain, Conor mac Nessa, Naoise, and Déirdre, Mève,[Pg 294] Oilioll, and Conall Cearnach, have about them a great deal of the circumstantiality that is entirely lacking to the dim, mist-magnified, and distorted figures of the Dagda, Nuada, Lugh the Long-handed, and their fellows.

The gods come and go as in the Iliad, and according to some accounts leave their posterity behind them. Cuchulain himself, the incarnation of Irish ?ριστ?ια, is according to certain authorities the son of the god Lugh the Long-handed.[1] He himself, like another Anchises, is beloved of a goddess and descends into the Gaelic Elysium,[2] and the most important epic of the cycle is largely conditioned by an occurrence caused by the curse of a goddess, an occurrence wholly impossible and supernatural.[3] Yet these are for the most part excrescences no more affecting the conduct of the history than the actions of the gods affect the war round Troy. Events, upon the whole, are motivated upon fairly reasonable human grounds, and there is a certain air of probability about them. The characters who now make their appearance upon the scene are not long prior to, or are contemporaneous[Pg 295] with, the birth of Christ; and the wars of the Tuatha De Danann, Nemedians, and Fomorians, are left some seventeen hundred years behind.

This cycle, which I have called the "Heroic" or "Red Branch," might also be named the "Ultonian," because it deals chiefly with the heroes of the northern province. One saga relates the birth of Conor mac Nessa. His mother was Ness and his father was Fachtna Fathach, king of Ulster, but according to what is probably the oldest account, his father was Cathba the Druid. This saga relates how, through the stratagem of his mother Ness, Conor slipped into the kingship of Ulster, displacing Fergus mac Róigh [Roy], the former king, who is here represented as a good-natured giant, but who appears human enough in the other sagas.[4] Conor's palace is described with its three buildings; that of the Red Branch, where were kept the heads and arms of vanquished enemies; that of the Royal Branch, where the kings lodged; and that of the Speckled House, where were laid up the shields and spears and swords of the warriors of Ulster. It was called the Speckled or Variegated House from the gold and silver of the shields, and gleaming of the spears, and shining of the goblets, and all arms were kept in it, in order that at the banquet when quarrels arose the warriors might not have wherewith to slay each other.

Conor's palace at Emania contained, according to the Book of Leinster, one hundred and fifty rooms, each large enough for three couples to sleep in, constructed of red oak, and bordered with copper. Conor's own chamber was decorated with bronze and silver, and ornamented with golden birds, in whose eyes were precious stones, and was large enough for thirty[Pg 296] warriors to drink together in it. Above the king's head hung his silver wand with three golden apples, and when he shook it silence reigned throughout the palace, so that even the fall of a pin might be heard. A large vat, always full of good drink, stood ever on the palace floor.

Another story tells of Cuchulain's mysterious parentage. His mother was a sister of King Conor; consequently he was the king's nephew.

Another again relates the wooing of Cuchulain, and how he won Emer for his wife.

Another is called Cuchulain's "Up-bringing," or teaching, part of which, however, is found in the piece called the "Wooing of Emer." This saga relates how he, with two other of the Ultonians, went abroad to Alba to perfect their warlike accomplishments, and how they placed themselves under the tuition of different female-warriors,[5] who taught them various and extraordinary feats of arms. He traverses the plain of Misfortune by the aid of a wheel and of an apple given him by an unknown friend, and reaches the great female instructress Scathach, whose daughter falls in love with him.

An admirable example occurs to me here, of showing in the concrete that which I have elsewhere laid stress upon, namely, the great elaboration which in many instances we find in the modern versions of sagas, compared with the antique vellum texts. It does not at all follow that because a story is written down with brevity in ancient Irish, it was also told with brevity. The oldest form of the saga of Cuchulain's "Wooing of Emer" contains traces of a pre-Danish or seventh-century text, but the condensed and shortened relation of the saga found in the oldest manuscript of it, is almost certainly not the form in which the bards and ollavs related it. On the contrary, I believe that the stories now epitomised in ancient vellum texts were even then told, though not written down,[Pg 297] at full length, and with many flourishes by the bards and professed story-tellers, and that the skeletons merely, or as Keating calls it, the "bones of the history,"[6] were in most instances all that was committed to the rare and expensive parchments. It is more than likely that the longer modern paper redactions, though some of the ancient pagan traits, especially those most incomprehensible to the moderns, may be missing, yet represent more nearly the manner of the original bardic telling, than the abridgments of twelfth or thirteenth-century vellums.

In this case the ancient recension,[7] founded on a pre-Danish text, merely mentions that Scathach's house, at which Cuchulain arrives, after leaving the plain of Misfortune,

    "was built upon a rock of appalling height. Cuchulain followed the road pointed out to him. He reached the castle of Scathach. He knocked at the door with the handle of his spear and entered. Uathach, the daughter of Scathach, meets him. She looked at him, but she spoke not, so much did the hero's beauty make her love him. She went to her mother and told her of the beauty of the man who had newly come. 'That man has pleased you,' said her mother. 'He shall come to my couch,' answered the girl, 'and I shall sleep at his side this night.' 'Thy intention displeases me not,' said her mother."

One can see at a glance how bald and brief is all this, because it is a précis, and vellum was scarce. I venture to say that no bard ever told it in this way. The scribes who first committed this to parchment, say in the seventh or eighth century, probably wrote down only the leading incidents as they remembered them. They may not have been themselves either bards, ollavs, or story-tellers. It is chiefly in the later centuries, after the introduction of paper, when the economising of space ceased to be a matter of importance, that we find our sagas told with all the redundancy of description, epithet, and incident with which I suspect the very earliest bards embellished all those sagas of which we have now only little more[Pg 298] than the skeletons. Compare, for instance, the ancient version which I have just given, with the longer modern versions which have come down to us in several paper manuscripts, of which I here use one in my own possession, copied about the beginning of the century by a scribe named O'Mahon, upon one of the islands on the Shannon.

In the first place this version tells us that on his arrival at Scathach's mansion he finds a number of her scholars and other warriors engaged in hurling outside the door of her fortress. He joins in the game and defeats them—this is a true folk-lore introduction. He finds there Naoise, Ardan, and Ainnlè, the three sons of Usnach, celebrated in perhaps the most touching saga of this whole cycle, and another son of Erin with them. This is a literary touch, by one who knew his literature.[8] Learning that he is come from Erin, they ask news of their native country, and salute him with kisses. They then bring him to the Bridge of the Cliffs, and show him what their work is during the first year, which was learning to pass this bridge.

    "Wonderful," says the saga, "was the sight that bridge afforded when any one would leap upon it, for it narrowed until it became as narrow as the hair of one's head, and the second time it shortened until it became as short as an inch, and the third time it grew slippery until it was as slippery as an eel of the river, and the fourth time it rose up on high against you until it was as tall as the mast of............